I’ve said before that when you watch ignoramuses and authoritarians trash your country, anger is the appropriate response. driftglass explains why:

The Real Problem is that, in the name of Holy Balance, journalists treat the patently and dangerously delusional adherents of Cult of Dubya as if their opinions were worthy of discussion.

Except what Mr. Ites still dogmatically believes in this Year of Our Lord 2007 — that we are in Iraq because “What they did on 9/11 is a travesty” — is not a matter of opinion, any more than a fanatical insistence on the flatness of the Earth, the falseness of the Holocaust, or a 6,000 B.C. “Born On” date for Creation are matters of opinion.

These are matters of historical and scientific fact, and those who insist otherwise do not have opinions.

They have delusions.

And when one’s delusions have been calculatedly stoked and weaponized by evil men, have been marched into the wrong fucking country, have caused the death of tens of thousands, the mutilation and suffering of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions, at the projected cost of trillions of dollars, then your wingnut fantasies no longer get to be elided over as merely creepy and eccentric.

Because now your delusions come with one of the biggest fucking price tags in American history. One that we will be paying down for generations to come.

Which is why those delusions no longer deserve anyone’s respectful attention, or any cravenly obsequious treatment by journalists in the name of “balance”….

For the last thirty years many of us on the Left remained politely and tolerantly silent on these subjects [when] we should have been loud and rude and demanded to know why dangerous, stupid, racist or crazy people keep getting treated with deference by the Lords of the Media?

…Why, when your country has been handed over to perverts and fascists by imbeciles and Christopaths, your press has collapsed into a pile of toadying hair, you treasury has been pissed away by criminals and your military hobbled by cowards and fanatics, it is somehow beyond the fucking pale to get angry about it?

Comments

This reminded me of the Hunter S Thompson quote I’ve long had on my web page (emphasis added):

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world–a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us … George W Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world.

W.r.t. driftgrass’ quote, it’s worth noting a fair amount of the non-USAian media is nowhere as tolerant (deferential) of the current regime. There are exceptions; e.g., The Conomist, er The Economist, is perhaps worse than the USAian-media (and has also been getting a lot of stick recently for some silly articles about Rachel Carson and the growth in the number of known species).

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world–a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us … George W Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world.

W.r.t. driftgrass’ quote, it’s worth noting a fair amount of the non-USAian media is nowhere as tolerant (deferential) of the current regime. There are exceptions; e.g., The Conomist, er The Economist, is perhaps worse than the USAian-media (and has also been getting a lot of stick recently for some silly articles about Rachel Carson and the growth in the number of known species

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